Our Trip Blog

The Events of Thursday, October 14, 2010

          Good morning, Maine! With Daddy and Caitlin back from their morning walk and Ben from his morning run, we ate a hearty breakfast of cold cereal with apple cider and hot chocolate. Showers were showered and Mom and I (Lindsey) cut the boys’ hair. With clean and rested bodies and a newly cleaned and organized RV, we headed out to encounter the day.

          We drove from our rustic campground to Wiscasset, Maine. Arriving at the Musical Wonder House, we opened the front door triggering a music box. This was the first of the five thousand music boxes found in the three-story, 32 room Musical Wonder House, that we would hear. The entrance hall of this Greek federal revival styled house, with its grand staircase, was overflowing with pictures, paintings, trinkets, and music boxes. We were greeted by our tour guide, Joseph Villani, who has sung with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. Our tour began in the Entrance Hall of the mansion which contained 23 antique coin-operated instruments, 19 of them music boxes. Mr. Villani gave us a brief history of the house and its inhabitants and then ushered us into the Green and Gold Room. We received candy from a musical hand-carved Swiss wooden bread bowl, heard the tune of an English teapot and musical trivet, a key wound music box, a singing mechanical bird, and a musical snuff box, hand carved into the shape of a dog. We then explored the Red Room which featured larger cylinder and disc music boxes, Austrian musical clocks, a Czech musical wall clock, and a xylophone made with different sized dinner gongs, which we all got to play.

          Next, we visited the Great Music Room. The favorite in this room was an Austrian Musical Clock Painting, a painting of some clock towers in Germany, with a clock that actually worked inside the painting, with a music box that played at a certain time every day. This larger room featured some larger music boxes and player grand pianos. The favorite musical mechanical instrument in this room was a Swiss orchestral box that played the 'Can-Can'. In addition to the regular contraptions inside the box, there were also drums and bells that played with the music. One of the walls in the room was covered in shelves holding smaller music boxes, musical steins from Germany, whistlers, and musical chalets. Dominating the right half of the large room stood a Steinway grand piano, owned and signed by Henry Steinway. We all got a chance to play on it. We ended our tour with a quick overview of some of the upstairs rooms. Abby’s favorite part of the upstairs was the last room that we viewed. In the center of the room was an elegantly decorated bed owned by Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. When asked who he was, Abby correctly answered that he was the man whose assassination started World War I. Because she answered correctly, Abby was chosen to demonstrate the last music box that we viewed on the tour, a musical chair. When Abby sat down, the music began and our lovely musical tour came to an end. We briefly viewed the gift shop, and then went on our way.

          We drove to Freeport, Maine and looked around an L.L. Bean Outlet store, Famous Footwear, and then the  L.L. Bean Flagship store, which is so large it is housed in several different buildings. Ben purchased some slippers while the rest of us just explored and then we headed out. We had dropped into a brownie store to look for the famous Maine needhams, a mixture of butter, mashed potatoes, coconut, and sugar covered in dark chocolate. We had no success in the brownie shop, but they recommended a chocolate factory that was nearby. We drove to the Wilbur’s of Maine Chocolate Confections and sampled needhams and then purchased dark, white, and mint chocolate bark. Then, we drove on to what would have been our lobster dinner. But they had just recently closed for the season and so we shopped at Shaw’s for groceries, ate a hot dinner of leftovers, fried chicken, asparagus, and banana cream pie. We then headed on to Walmart for the night and after some quick math with Daddy, settled in for the night.